The Department of Education is resuming a grant program that previously allocated millions of dollars to fund English training for pro-immigration organizations and left-wing colleges and universities. The National Professional Development (NPD) program plans to award approximately $49 million to organizations training educators who teach “English learners,” a definition that includes illegal aliens.
The department, which did not fund the NPD grant in 2025, announced the grant competition for this year on May 15, and it will remain open until July 14. The grant is awarded to applicants to aid “professional development activities intended to improve instruction for English learners” and “assist education personnel working with ELs to meet high professional standards.”
According to the Department of Education’s definition of English learner, this grant funding may be used to help someone “who is migratory, whose native language is a language other than English, and who comes from an environment where a language other than English is dominant.”
Tom Jones of the American Accountability Foundation told The Federalist that the NPD grant and others like it are a “waste of taxpayer funds.” According to Jones, this program should be “whacked” rather than reformed.
“It’s essentially a program that serves as a magnet for illegal migrants to come to the United States and get instruction in English in classrooms around the country,” Jones said. “If you’re going to come to the United States, come with English language skills that allow you to work and prosper in the country.”
The grant, which often goes to college and university teacher training programs, has gone to left-wing organizations in the past. One of these organizations was the Micro-Credentialing Options for Minnesota Educators Navigating Transformative Understandings of Multilingualism (MOMENTUM) program of Minnesota’s Southeast Service Cooperative.
MOMENTUM lists migrant students as Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE). “It is important for educators to understand the particular language, literacy, academic, socio-emotional, and cultural needs of these students,” one MOMENTUM training course states. Another training course encourages teachers pressure parents into having their students instructed in their home countries’ language as well as English.
Another group that received the NPD grant in the past was the Language in Society Teaching Apprenticeship (LISTA) program through the Regents of the University of California’s School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society (SKILLS) program.
SKILLS, created by faculty at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is the “only linguistic curriculum in California’s high schools.” One of the stated principles of SKILLS is that “students have the right to learn about language in their own and other communities, including both how it has been used as a tool for perpetuating inequality and how it can be used to advance social justice.” SKILLS also provides students with “activism opportunities.”
In 2022, the University of Massachusetts at Boston received $599,454 in year one funding for its CREATE program, which aims to train teachers to educate immigrant students. CREATE focuses on recruiting “Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) teachers who are bilingual.”
The Department of Education also previously used similar grant programs, such as the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), to award money to “migratory or seasonal farm workers (or immediate family members of such workers)” attending college in the United States. The Department of Education posted application information for this grant on May 13, indicating that CAMP will also resume.
Several Trump administration executive orders prohibit those applying for the award from promoting or enforcing “discriminatory equity ideology” that may violate federal civil rights laws. Acting Director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation Jonathan Butcher told The Federalist that the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Justice should “make sure grant recipients abide by civil rights laws.”
“Professional development programs such as this one have been found ineffective, and should be cut once the Education Department has the authority to do so,” Butcher said.
The administration is committed to abolishing the Department of Education, Butcher said, and “once they do so, grant programs such as these will end.”
The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
